


the sky of the sky of a tree called life

by VagabondDawn



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gardens, Cultural Differences, F/M, Misunderstandings, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe, Watch!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 16:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18525508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VagabondDawn/pseuds/VagabondDawn
Summary: Watch!verse. It’s Shikako Nara’s one year anniversary of working for the Konoha Military Police. Shisui just wants to give her a present, okay?





	the sky of the sky of a tree called life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fishebake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishebake/gifts).
  * Inspired by [watch not one another out of fear](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/474805) by wafflelate. 
  * Inspired by [watch not one another out of fear](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19873744) by [wafflelate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/pseuds/wafflelate). 



> Request by fishebake
> 
> Nara Shikako/Uchiha Shisui  
> Uchiha Uzume & Uchiha Shisui  
> WB: Uchiha Clan Mores & Folkways & Interpersonal Relationships  
> WB: Ninja Courtship  
> WB: Inter-Clan Courtship  
> WB: Ninja Cuisine
> 
> -I just really love Shikako and Shisui doing Stuff together, not to mention Uzume being suspicious of the Nara girl that's stolen Shisui's heart.

-  
  
"Shikako-chan!" Shisui calls as he bounds up the entrance stairs to the police building and into the main office on the ground floor. He's a little late and her shift has been over for nearly half an hour. "Oh, good, you're still here. I was worried I was going to miss you. Wait, why are you still here? Are you too busy to leave?"  
  
"Oh, I was just organising my desk," she says, smiling up at him and shutting the desk drawer she’d been going through. "Nothing important. I'm ready when you are."  
  
It's not like they spar _every_ day... but the only reason Shisui usually misses a training session is when he’s been called away unexpectedly on a mission and he’s pretty sure Tokimi-baa lets her know when that happens. He’s glad she waited today, anyway — she’s _said_ he could just come to the Nara compound looking for her, but that honestly sounds like a terrible idea.  
  
"Okay," Shisui says, "but first! I have something for you." He sets the tiny box down on her desk and beams at her.  
  
"Oh?" She opens it curiously and then... pauses at the sight of the thin silver band speckled with tiny green stones.  
  
It’s not _exactly_ the reaction Shisui had expected or hoped for. He feels like he'd missed a step, done something wrong but he doesn’t know what. It’s not an expensive ring but he'd thought it was something that she would like.  
  
"Kansoku said I should just get you ninja wire," Shisui babbles, probably a tad too fast. "But that's what he says I should get _anyone_ whenever I buy presents."  
  
"I mean," Shikako says, "Uchiha ninja wire is excellent. I'm glad my police badge lets me buy it — if I had to go back to using Konoha standard I think I would cry."  
  
Shisui nods furiously because there’s _so much to be said_ about the inferiority of Konoha standard ninja wire and how it’s _no wonder_ no other clan developed wire jutsu if _that’s_ what they’re using, but notices that she still doesn’t make any move to pick up her present. Her face is as blank as if she’s interrogating a witness, not giving anything away, and he can't tell what she's thinking.  
  
"If you don't like it..." he says awkwardly. "I'm sure they'll let you trade it in for something else. I just thought it matched your necklace and earrings — and I've seen other Nara wearing rings so I thought maybe—"  
  
Uchiha didn’t tend to wear much in the way of rings — most field ninja didn't because you didn’t want anything on your hands that could get _caught on stuff_ — but Uchiha didn't really tend towards other jewelry either. Shisui is aware that Shikako’s jewelry is very simple, compared to what civilians tended to wear, but it definitely stands out when she spends her days surrounded by the other police officers.  
  
"It's... fine," Shikako says, voice stilted, "but Shisui.... what's it _for_?"  
  
"Oh!” He blinks at her. “Happy one year anniversary with the police force! Has no one said that all day? Jeeze, they're terrible!"  
  
"I— oh," she sounds relieved. She finally picks up the ring, plucking it delicately out of the soft packaging in the giftbox and, after a second of hesitation, slides it onto her pointer finger. "Thank you. It _is_ very nice and matches my earrings. I brought cake in today to celebrate the anniversary and saved you a slice, if you want it."  
  
"I would love it," he says and they detour to the staff fridge where she pulls out a plastic container that’s sealed on all sides with tamper proof evidence tape. ‘To be opened by authorised personnel only’ it declares, and she’s written his name in neat, clear kana.  
  
"Doesn’t that count as misuse of police supplies?" He asks, laughing as he accepts it. 

Inside the fridge there are a whole bunch of other containers, taped up the same way and neatly labelled with the names of the night shift officers.  
  
She grins at him, a hint of mischief sparking in her eyes like _yes of course_. "I didn’t want you to be too worried to eat it," she says, virtuously. "And Tokimi-san said it was okay."  
  
Shisui is touched by the thoughtfulness but he's _definitely_ eaten things out of the police fridge before without the slightest wariness. Even things that — strictly speaking — might not have been his to eat. 

It doesn’t escape his notice, though, that she never actually says what was _wrong_ with the ring.  
  
-  
  
"Tokimi-baa," he asks over dinner that night. "Are there other... things like flower languages?"  
  
Tokimi-baa pauses. "I'm not sure what you mean?" She answers, looking at him quizzically.  
  
Which is fair because _Shisui_ isn’t sure what he's asking either. There was _something_ about the gift that wasn’t right, but he doesn’t know what. If he’s done something wrong… he’d like to apologise for it, is all.  
  
Uzume-ba smirks across the table at him, though. "Give someone another bouquet of marigolds, did you?"  
  
"They looked _nice_ ," Shisui protests, just as he's done every time that incident has been brought up. "And they made her laugh."  
  
"Yeah, laugh at how embarrassed you were," Uzume-ba snickers, like she hadn’t totally overreacted at the time and been _so concerned_ Shisui might have actually insulted someone unforgivably. It’s only the fact that it turned out completely harmless that makes her poke fun at it.  
  
"If it counts, it counts," Amano-ji says because he's also actually _the worst_. He only pretends otherwise and most people don’t notice when he’s standing next to Uzume-ba.  
  
Shisui resolutely ignores them. "Like... I don't know... gemstones or jewelry or things," he says, changing the subject back. If _anyone_ knows it'll be Tokimi-baa. 

She looks thoughtful, but before she can answer him, Uzume-ba breaks back into the conversation and says, suspiciously, "who are you giving jewelry to, Shisui?"  
  
Shisui decides there are probably other people he could ask, after all. He crams his last bite of rice into his mouth and says “okay, bye” on his way out the door. 

Sometimes the success of a mission lies in knowing when to retreat. 

— 

Shisui wanders around the compound because he’s not sure exactly _who_ else to ask — or even where to kill time before going back and asking Tokimi-baa when Uzume-ba isn’t hovering around being nosy — when he walks past the Go Parlour on Fifth Street and spots Koyane-ojii playing against his old Nara friend, Kasuga.  
  
Perfect.  
  
"Hi, ojii-san," he chirps, moving closer. “Kasuga-san.”  
  
Koyane gives him a baleful look and after a second holds out his empty sake flask. "Go get us refills before you start whatever nonsense you're about to start," he instructs.  
  
Shisui does because he is a perfect and helpful child who everyone would like to help in turn, before settling down beside what looks like an objectively terrible game. He's not sure either of them actually know how to play Go.  
  
"If it's about Shikako," Kasuga says, "you'd be better off asking her yourself."  
  
He puts down two more stones and forms the approximate shape of a cat on the board. Koyane-ojii makes an impressed noise.  
  
"It's... not exactly," Shisui says, because ‘ask Shikako’ is actually his normal attack strategy for things _about Shikako_. He just doesn’t know if this is or if it’s something bigger. "I just wondered if... the Nara have some kind of ... flower language thing for … stones or things like that?"  
  
Kasuga looks a little surprised.  
  
"If it's not secret!" Shisui tacks on hastily. He _really_ doesn’t want to cross the line into asking about clan secrets.  
  
"It's not secret," Kasuga says. "No more than the Yamanaka's flower language, anyway, and that spread pretty fast. There is one but, hmm, its less useful and precise than the flower language. ‘This month is this birthstone’, or ‘this gemstone mean means harmony and that one means friendship’ and so on. I don’t think anyone particularly bothers with it these days. There's all kinds of theories that different stones can influence chakra flow differently, but no hard proof that I'm aware of."  
  
Shisui nods slowly. "What about, like, for jewelry?"  
  
Kasuga raises an eyebrow. "Trying to find something nice for her, huh? Could always try her birthstone — the gem that’s matched to her birthdate. Let's see, September is...Sapphire, I think."  
  
Shisui files that information away immediately — the stone, that her birthday is in _September,_ and the curious fact that Kasuga knows it off hand. Maybe that’s normal, he doesn’t really know much about the internal workings of the Nara clan. Shisui _thinks_ there’s something strange about Shikako’s position in the Nara clan, but they always seem so laid back and treat things like they’re _absolutely normal_ , that abnormal things get… covered over. 

"No, I mean, is there a language for jewelry?” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly and smiles sheepishly. “Because I already got her something? But I think I might have done something wrong, so I was wondering if there was a meaning to it that I didn’t know about."  
  
"What'd you give her?" Kasuga asks neutrally, toying with his tray of Go stones, making them rattle around.  
  
"A silver ring with, uh, green… I don’t actually know what they were?"  
  
Both his eyebrows have climbed now and Shisui doesn’t really appreciate it. "She reacted strangely, did she? To make you think it was wrong?" Kasuga sounds more amused than anything, which means that even if it does mean something it can’t be _too_ bad. "Did she put it on? Which finger?"  
  
"This one," Shisui says, marking exactly where on his own hand, just in case that placement matters too.  
  
"Then you're fine," Kasuga says. He takes off his own thin golden band and hands it over to Shisui. "See the engraving on the inside? The date? That’s the day I married my Haruhi."  
  
"Uhhh," Shisui says, suddenly not liking where this is going. He holds the ring like it’s very precious, or very explosive.  
  
Kasuga chuckles at him and even Koyane-ojii looks like it’s dawned on him what’s happened.  
  
"I'm surprised you aren't familiar with the custom," Kasuga says. "It’s pretty popular with the civilians of Fire Country. Definitely common in Konoha.” He takes a long drink of sake. “Typically, the only time a young man would give a ring to his ladyfriend is when he's asking her to marry him."  
  
Shisui splutters. "That's not what I—"  
  
Kasuga really is laughing at him now. "Oh, she knew that. Engagement and wedding rings are always worn on the fourth finger of the left hand." He slides his _wedding ring_ back on and wiggles his hand to demonstrate.  
  
"Reminds me of the flower crown debacle," Koyane says, taking a long drink. "Remember that?"  
  
Kasuga laughs again and just like that Shisui is — gratefully — no longer the topic of conversation. "How many Yamanaka and Senju ended up getting married before they sorted that one out?" 

— 

The next day seems to drag and Shisui anxiously waits for the end of Shikako’s police shift. It’s not the _same_ kind of anxious waiting that he normally does — this is definitely more nervous than anticipatory. He waits in the little park near police HQ, having decided it would _actually_ be worse to be nervously waiting inside HQ. 

“Hey,” Shikako says, appearing next to him about five minutes before the hour strikes, smiling slightly. “Tokimi-san says I should charge you with loitering with intent.” 

She’s removed her on-duty signifiers, though, which means he isn’t _actually_ in danger of arrest. And also probably that Tokimi-baa knows _exactly_ who he was giving jewelry to. 

That… might be a problem. 

“Ah, hey,” Shisui says, lamely, causing her smile to falter a little. He fidgets with his hands, then sticks them in his pockets. “Can I… talk to you?” 

Which is a stupid way to start the conversation, really, because they _are_ talking. 

“Sure,” Shikako says, but neutrally like she’s prepared to Not React to anything he might say. “What’s up?” 

“Just… yesterday,” Shisui says. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything. I mean, I didn’t know that rings were special or anything. I just thought, you know, that it matched and you didn’t have one.” 

Shikako watches him for a second longer, then shrugs, blase. “You asked around, didn’t you?” she says, sounding wry. She runs her thumb over the ring on her index finger. “ _That’s_ how it got into the gossip network. I wondered why I was getting congratulated on my ‘engagement ring’.” 

Shisui winces. “Sorry.” In hindsight, he probably _should_ have been more discrete. He hadn’t expected it to be _that_ big of a misunderstanding. 

She rolls her eyes. “Oh, they all think it’s _hilarious,_ ” she says dismissively, like she doesn’t find it very funny but isn’t that bothered by it either. “But it’s not really worse than the teasing they were doing before.” 

_Shisui_ has been getting plenty of teasing about their _friendship_ , but somehow he hadn’t thought about it going both ways. People discouraging her from hanging out with the Uchiha in general or him in particular, yeah, but _teasing?_ It seems too accepting. 

“Still,” he says, because he doesn’t want them to be weird and awkward. He likes hanging out with her too much for that. 

“Still,” she agrees, “if they keep it up I’ll have to come up with something else for them to gossip about.” She gives him a sharp grin, and he heavily suspects they wouldn’t enjoy that ‘something’ _at all_. 

**Author's Note:**

> here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud / and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows — i carry your heart with me by e.e. cummings


End file.
